The fact of the matter is, America loves rankings, averages, rating systems,
top-10 -20 -25 lists, statistical representations of performance and perceived quality—from politics to entertainment to sports to education, we’re a nation awash in numerical hierarchies. Perhaps that’s why several U-M academic leaders reacted to the latest higher education rankings in terms Miles Davis would have appreciated.
"I do think this ‘Top 10 thing’ is a bit infantile," said Robert Weisbuch, professor of English and interim dean of the U-M’s Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies in his initial response to the publication of a four-year survey of 274 US universities by the National Research Council (NRC), a group of experts on graduate education. The reputational study, "Research-Doctorate Programs in the United States: Continuity and Change," was guided by the Committee for the Study of Research-Doctorate Programs in the United States and sponsored by the Conference Board of Associated Research Councils.
Even though the NRC showed U-M as tied for tenth place in the top 10 list of graduate programs, Weisbuch advised at the conclusion of his report on the study that the University community should always bear in mind that "we should, and do, know ourselves much better than a stranger can. We’re constantly evaluating and re-evaluating ourselves. Perhaps it’s best to forget about rankings and do all we can to make Michigan fulfill its potential."
The NRC ranked the U-M anthropology program tops in the nation, and 13 other graduate programs also ranked in the top 10: psychology (second); political science and classics (both third); sociology and industrial engineering (both fourth); aerospace engineering and mechanical engineering (both fifth); electrical engineering (sixth); philosophy (eighth); mathematics, French and music (all ninth); and civil engineering (10th).
The NRC also showed U-M as having risen in the rankings in 19 of the 24 disciplines included in the last NRC survey in 1982.
Such results hardly distressed Weisbuch. Nor, he later told the U-M Regents during a presentation on academic rankings, does he think infantile practices are necessarily without value. But he pointed out that even though 38 U-M programs were ranked in the 41 academic categories the NRC reviewed, Rackham offers 69 additional degree programs in disciplines that were not surveyed.
Each year the U-M Office of Academic Planning and Analysis responds to more than 30 questionnaires that are used to survey colleges and universities for the purpose of listing "top schools," "best buys," "most selective," "top partying" and such. Some questionnaires are used, however subjectively, to construct a measure of quality; others are used to compile descriptive campus guidebooks.
Assessing the latest US News rankings (the magazine introduced its annual feature in 1983), Christopher Shea wrote in the Sept. 22 Chronicle of Higher Education, "The college issue is among the magazine’s best sellers, and a college guidebook based on the issue sold nearly a million copies last year." Yet, Shea noted, a higher education consulting firm surveyed a random sample of 500 college-bound seniors and found that while more than half had consulted various magazine rankings, "they said the rankings’ influence on them had been merely a fraction of that exerted by college literature and the opinions of counselors."
In US News’s 1995 survey, Michigan dropped from its 21st spot to 24th in the top-25 ranking. University officials felt they had a duty to respond to the highly publicized rankings even though criticism of the methodology is seen by some as "sour grapes."
In "knowledge-intensive missions," President James J. Duderstadt said at the public informational discussion of the recent rankings at the September Regents meeting, "there is no bottom line but a matrix of indicators of quality" that embraces respect of peers, intellectual breadth, diversity and leadership.
How well US News captured such intangibles in its statistical exercise was called into question, Duderstadt said, by the fact that the University of California at Berkeley finished tops in the NRC study based in large part on the judgment of 8,000 leading faculty, but failed to make even the top 25 in US News’s ranking.
Furthermore, that the U-M could wind up so low after sharing eighth place (with Duke University, the University of Chicago, Cornell University and Columbia University, all private institutions) in US News’s ranking of universities by their academic reputation among their peers, was another sign, Duderstadt said, that the methodology was "biased toward private education."
The welcome news of the third-place rankings of the College of Engineering and the Business School in the magazine’s separate report on undergraduate professional programs did not mitigate criticism of the methodology employed in the major report.
Marilyn Knepp, director of Academic Planning and Analysis, explained to the Regents and audience how survey methodology can produce such wildly disparate results. The U-M placed 142 out of 229 in US News assessment of "alumni satisfaction," Knepp said, because that measurement is determined solely by the percentage of alumni who have donated to the institution in the last year. The U-M is fifth in the amount of money given by alumni annually, according to Thomas Kinnear, vice president for development.
US News’s methodology, in short, favors private schools, especially selective, older, well-endowed privates; thus, the University of Virginia (19th, down from 17th last year) joined Michigan as the only public institutions in US News’s top 25. The weight given to SAT scores, student selectivity, spending per student and student/faculty ratio all slant the conclusions away from public higher education.
No one, however, argued that the University community should ignore magazine rankings. The lists may be "somewhat arbitrary," said Walter L. Harrison, vice president for University Relations, "but studies show they influence top academic students’ decisions on where to go to college, and also to professional schools." For that reason alone, he said, it is important for universities to inform the public about the complex data and issues that lie behind the rankings.
In his initial response to the rankings, President Duderstadt said that it would "take some time to analyze the rankings," but that it was safe to say that the University "continues to be the national leader in the social sciences, among the leaders in the humanities and engineering, and improving in the sciences. While there are some areas of concern, these rankings do indicate the exceptional strength of our faculty and the quality of our academic programs in these important areas of graduate education."
. . . October 1995
